Raviolis love it and so do we…Ricotta!

Ricotta is traditionally made with the whey from another cheese. We are going to make it with new milk since most of us probably don’t have whey lying around. (If you do have some whey hand, besides ricotta you can use that whey for a lot of things. Check out these ideas!)

This cheese is super easy and quick, so it can be another one of those trick cheeses you can whip out for company. They’ll be indebted to you forever. Because, why kid ourselves, we learn how to make cheese, to impress our friends.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 gallon of pasteurized whole milk

1 tsp cheese salt

1 tsp citric acid, diluted in ¼ cup cool water

butter muslin

¼ cup heavy cream

Pour the milk into a big pot. Before heating it up, add the citric acid and cheese salt and stir in well. When you add your citric acid and notice that half of it is left in the bottom of the measuring cup, just scoop up some milk, swirl it around and pour it back in. Repeat until everything is in the milk.

Heat the milk to 185-195 degrees or until the curd and whey separate and the whey is not milky. DON’T BOIL! Keep an eye on it and stir occasionally so it doesn’t scorch.

Once you see that the whey is clear, cover and let it rest off of the heat for 10 minutes.

Carefully ladle the curds into a muslin-lined colander. Tie it up and let it drain for 20-30 minutes.

Afterwards, scoop out and add cream if you want creamier ricotta. I don’t recommend this though. Creamier ricotta sounds delicious, but the texture ends up being weird and not like the ricotta you know from the store.

Done! You can store it for over a week in an airtight container in the ‘fridge.

I added a layer of dried basil leaves to the top of the ricotta and put the lid on and stored it in the ‘fridge for two days. Afterwards, it had a delicious hint of basil. I used it to stuff raviolis and my family was pleased.

Here! Check out my recipe for pasta dough and make your own! (This is from my personal food blog and this is the same post from when I broke my foot. So you’ll have to pass through the pictures of my bruised foot to get to the pasta recipe. Sorry!)